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How do people find (and land) jobs in the modern era? That’s the question Ilana Gershon spent years asking everyone from job-seekers to hiring managers for her new book, Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (Or Don’t Find) Work Today(University of Chicago Press). In a job market that’s changed drastically in the last few years alone, Gershon found that much of the conventional wisdom around the hiring process simply doesn’t apply anymore. Here, she breaks down five of the biggest myths about the job search today.

Myth 1: That guy you handed a card to at a networking dinner will get you your next job.

Career counselors have recommended that people use weak ties to find a job for decades because of Mark Granovetter’s beautiful study of how white-collar workers found their next job in the early 1970s, Getting a Job. Back then, a major problem in getting a job was finding out that there was a job—you learned about jobs through local newspapers ads, help-wanted signs or word of mouth. Granovetter discovered that weak ties—people you knew who knew somebody—were a great way to learn about jobs. Nowadays the problem is different. Jobs are easy to find out about, so everybody applies. You have to get past the applicant tracking system; someone has to notice your résumé in a large pile. That means that actual connections from the workplace matter much more than any others. The people you’ve worked with before are the ones who will help you get your next job, because they can talk about what a good worker you are.

Myth 2: You should try to have as many different types of jobs as possible

You’re told, “Don’t get stuck in a rut!” You should always be enhancing your skills and changing what you do. But this comes with a risk that people don’t often talk about: when you’ve held too many different types of jobs, it becomes harder and harder for recruiters and hiring managers to understand what you do. When you are applying for a job, people want you to be predictable—they want to know what they are getting when they hire you. If they can’t understand your résumé or your career path, they have a harder time picturing you as part of their team and they’ll move on to the next résumé.

Myth 3: You have to be unique.

Sure, it’s good to stand out. But hiring managers want good workers who will get along with everyone else in their workplace—they don’t want the most unusual person they have ever met. Being different than the rest can help at some stages of the job search, when you want someone to notice you in a large crowd. But once you have gotten to the interview stage, it matters a lot more that you are competent and personable. The hiring manager wants to be able to picture you as part of a team.

Myth 4: You have to have an amazing personal brand.

We hear a lot about personal branding these days, but very little about what it actually does—or how much time it takes. You have to choose three or four words that reflect your authentic self and make sure that all your online and offline conversations reflect those three or four words. It’s different from making sure you have a good reputation, because in practice, branding means you focus on how you appear in short snapshots, not what you do over a long period of time. And there’s no sign that it works. I interviewed lots of recruiters and hiring managers about how they selected applicants, and no one said, “That person had such a great brand, I had to interview them.” No one talked about noticing any of the techniques that people do to create a brand when they were looking at applicants. And why would they? You hire someone for their skills, and not many jobs require that you use the skills that you developed to brand yourself effectively. Good managers don’t have to figure out how to reduce a complex person into three or four words; they have to know how to manage people.

Myth 5: If you don’t passionately love the work, you shouldn’t take a job.

Enjoying your job is a good thing, but only looking for a job in which you feel passionate about the tasks you will be doing keeps you from looking at all sorts of other factors that make a job worthwhile. Decent pay, decent benefits, a decent work schedule and decent co-workers are all important too. All too often, people are asked to work for less money, or no money, because they are supposed to love their work. Just like in romance, your passion might blind you to the ways in which someone is treating you badly. If you only choose a job because you love doing the work, you might not pay enough attention to who you are doing the work with—how important it is to work in a place where you get along with your co-workers and where the company cares about treating its employees well.

AMG/Parade Digital

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